Il Community Consolidated School District 15 Board of Education - Special Meeting

All right. Um, we will now call the meeting to order. Can I have a roll call, please? Ader here. Anarino here. Taylor here. Shupai here. Khan here. Badman here. Hunt late.

Almost here. All right. The mission statement of district 15. By leveraging strengths and providing highquality support, we will honor our diverse learners in reaching their full potential. All right. So today's meeting is to select the firm that will support uh district 15 in um finding our next superintendent. So, this is an important decision tonight and look forward to hearing from um our selected firms. All right. Okay. Any green sheets? Leo. [laughter] Hello. Hello. Hello.

You got the floor all to yourself, man. You got the whole [laughter] thing. He wants to talk about volleyball. There we go. [laughter] Um All right. So we can skip over public comment. Wonderful. All right. So we will start with our presentations um for the [clears throat] evening and we will start with student centered services. Good evening.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Good evening everyone. Um my name is Don Green and I'm here representing student centered services and we really appreciate you inviting us uh in to present this evening. uh the opportunity to present to you this evening a little bit about myself as one of the partners of student centered services. Um most of my career I was in Bloomington Normal um central Illinois but uh when I became a superintendent in 2010 I started halfway up north. I was in Smanok if you've ever heard of that by Sandwich. Yes.

Yorkville you know right right there Route 34. It was a beautiful place to be. And then I um finished in Palos Heights in the Orland Park area and moved my family up to New Lennox. So of our six kids, our last two went to the Lincoln Way schools up there in New Lennox. Um after I retired, I um you know there you know the need in education, right? You can't get out. Um it's been now seven years and still still very active. But I worked in Kilder. I worked in um Lraange. I worked for a whole year at Skoi after retirement. So, as I'm driving up here, I'm like, "Oh, everything's familiar. Everything's familiar to me." I now live in outside of Poria in Dunlap because you know what? Our first grandchild was born um a few years back. She's she's now six. So, um and since then, we now have five grandchildren. So, um they're coming fast and furious and we're in the right place.

Um I've always been very active. I I followed a superintendent who was very active in organizations and I did that myself. So um as a partner here uh part of the reason why I lead the pillar for searches is um I was on the board for uh suburban superintendent association. I'm still actively involved in urban superintendent organization. Um good friends with the puria district 150 superintendent. Uh she got me in that. Um, I feel like even though I now am in central Illinois, I have a very broad reach and I'm happy to be up here up here in Palatine. Um, actually for a number of years when we lived up here, my husband uh worked in in the district uh prior to Dr. Hines coming and I'll let Dr. Coleman introduce herself. Well, I'm a more suburban city girl, but um I am currently the superintendent of Golf School District 67 in Morton Grove, and I have I am a bilingual specialed teacher by trade. So, that was that's my passion. That's what I um set out to do as a teacher. Um, and I have over 20 years experience as an administrator in everything from a dean to a principal to special ed administrator, assistant superintendent, and now a superintendent. Um, I h I am I have expertise in special education and audits and I do that for other school districts around as well. And I'm a certified leadership coach um as well that I and I currently support principles and other superintendents in their leadership journey. Um, I am bilingual in Spanish. Um, fun fact, my husband and I own um an a home, a second home in Medigene, Colombia. Um, so you can make all your narco comments if you want. [laughter] Um, but it's a beautiful, beautiful uh country. South America is a beautiful place to be. Um, the language, the culture, the people,

it's just that's kind of where we hope to spend our winters and get away from all this like Chicago snow. um as we as I get close to retirement. I am a following Lori. Next year will be my last year um as superintendent and I'm very excited to do this type of work because there has been a public assault on public education and it is important that school boards and administrators and districts have support outside that can help them not only find the right people but also to support them in any of the services um you know that they need be them financial, special education, strategic planning, whatever it is. And so I have a real passion for that. So, while I am edging towards that retirement, um I'm really excited to be part of this company um because of the like-minded individuals I have worked with all over the state um to be able to help match superintendents with districts. And that is the most important job that you have is to hire the next superintendent and we are excited to be a part of that to help you to do that.

Hi, Mrs. Hunt. I'm gonna guess. Yeah. [laughter] All right. You guys want to keep um Okay. Oh, sorry. Am I doing

No. And our our third partner is uh Dr. Kristen Humphre. He's the current currently the superintendent of East Molen School District, a large diverse school district in the Rock Island, Molen, Quad Cities area. He is actually um a board member for AASA, which is the National Organization for Schools Superintendent. and he is presenting in out of state right now. I don't want to say Arizona because it's, you know, probably nice and warm there and not quite so good here, but um Kristen and I have actually done several searches together um with this company. I I just met him when the company was started a few years ago. I'll go ahead and and um turn to a little bit about our company and why we were started and why we're here today. Um we we started with 15 partners. We've we've now added I don't know over 15 or so associates to the company. So we are are strong. We have people uh clear north in Lake and Cook counties. We are I'm about the only person in central Illinois. We have a few people in southern Illinois. Um we have people in DuPage. Um um so we are we are we feel that we are comfortable all over the state. Um and we we just saw the need as superintendent. Uh so about half of us are retired and about half are still sitting soups

or business managers, right? Um we do have uh one of the people she she ended up being a superintendent her last few years, but she was the head of Illinois Association of School Business Officials. She does a lot for our company through through that organization. But we are active. Um like I said, you you really can't I was talking to Dr. Hines about what are you going to do in retirement? I mean, there will be so many opportunities. There's just the need is so great and you know that we're struggling to find teachers. We're we're struggling to find um you know, leaders of of any kind for school. So, thank you for the job you're doing being here tonight. So, um we decided to start this company to kind of fill that gap. So, we do strategic planning, you know, searches. It's hard to get into the search. You know, we we've gotten the opportunity. We we just got going last um well it was a year this summer so it's just been about a year and a half. Um we do audits. Um we we have done many many things related to financial uh planning. Um so um we just do a variety of things. We try to fill that gap for schools because we know ourselves as superintendents that the need is there. A little bit about our process. We will work for you, right? It's it's not just our process and this is the way we're going to do it. Um we're going to we're going to run the search how you want the search to be run. We'll help, you know, as much as you want us to. Um I think my the I I just finished the Rochester, if you know where that's at, it's outside of Springfield. Um just did their search um unit district. Um gone through some tough times and um we just finished that. the board president and I were I mean we're besties now. She's she's actually getting married and leaving the board and and um I feel like we're I'm probably going to be invited there. But

um our our process is one in which you know we want to include all the people that you want us to include, right? We bring this experience with us working with boards of education, working with your current superintendent and then our network is far and wide. Um we will be seeking input um from our community your community members. I think you've already started that through through a survey. Um but we'll help you know analyze those results and and help you identify that profile right that that um those characteristics that you want your um next superintendent to have. um we will meet with whatever groups that you determine you would like us to meet with, right? And have those forums, those opportunities um for them to get to to you know have a say in what's important to them. Um clear communication process like I said, however, if you want it to be through Dr. Hines if you want it to be with board president or whomever you choose um that communication will be clear and all the time however you need me I am unfortunately I am one of those people who is always looking at that which right now I have set to look at the time so that we don't go over um we know that this is an important job and we're here to help and support you in doing that job our process um oh thank you. I have a partner here that's already turning it. Um, so it includes six steps. You know, the initial board work is us talking to you, doing one-on-one interviews with you. Um, and anybody else who you want us to interview um in in some other ones I've done. I've done some some district office personnel. Um, you know, whoever you want us to interview one-on-one. and then also those community engagement which would be the second um part of the

process recruitment and and screening process selection transition service coaching and mentoring. So we're going to talk about each of those um as we move through our slides. So this first one is is really your timeline, right? Based on what we've been able to see from your website and you know try to do our homework a little bit about this. Um we know that we will have to move quickly and we've already started doing that. We us along with Kristen have already started reaching out to people. Again um it doesn't matter whether you know we're we're chosen as your search company. We want the best for your district. We we know this district and we we we know people out there that will be great candidates for you. So the initial board work would be now in November. I know we're we're into November. I get that. Um I'm going to triple I. Susan's going to triple I. I mean we will be there. We will be, you know, meeting and greeting all the people there. Uh Kristen's doing that right now at AASA talking about Palletine 15. Um so that's that's right now. And then we'll go through the timeline as we present each of our each of our slides.

Oops. Just kidding. Okay. Sorry. All right. Yeah. Oh, did we both push it? [laughter] Sorry.

So, getting stakeholder and community input is really critical in making sure you have a transparent process where you can get feedback from those in your community. I know you have had done this some of our work for us. So, thank you um with your with your survey. And along with that, as Don mentioned, we will be having one-on- ones with you to be able to identify certain characteristics, experiences, and um qualities that for you are really important that you want us to look for. In addition to that, we will be having these listening sessions with well what we might we will we will recommend that to you and then you can go ahead and tell us with your staff, with community members, with support staff and your cabinet as well. Um, you have a very large district and there are many, many opinions and our job is to sift through that and to create themes and trends that will help you to determine what is best for your district. And then together we will create this leadership profile that matches the unique needs of district 15. And with that deer leadership profile, we will measure that is what we will measure all candidates against

because we understand that people have already been applying and people there's a lot of chatter out there about Lor's retirement and district 15. Um we will we will also have a booth at triple I for student center services and that's how we do some of our oneto ones and again of course we would love to be chosen but it is important to us as public educators that we are supporting finding the the right person to support this district just like when I retire I want that same for my district as well. We are committed to this work and that is why we have already started reaching out to people and directing them to your website to start taking a look at that application process. Um I am happy to do Spanish translation um community service um or not community service that would be sad um community engagement um with some of your community. [clears throat] I know there are over 80 languages here so we can work to talk about how might we best be able to get their input. Again, the survey might have been the best way, but to talk about who are those important groups, your your, you know, your BPAC folks, your PTA, your foundation, like who all is involved? And those are all critical cogs in the wheel that make district 15 run. And then you need a leader that then can continuously make that wheel turn, right? And so we are very committed to doing that for you.

Okay. So, I don't need to review your district mission. Um, but I did, you know, we, your strategic plan is really inspiring and, you know, we understand your community. There's, you know, there's 35 square miles. I was a teacher in district 214, so I am very well aware of, you know, the feeder districts and how you guys work with your your send or your sender high schools, um, both 211 and 214. And I think what to me stuck out the most Oh, good lord. I'm sorry, getting a little jumpy. um is your portrait of a graduate. I think it is I have done that work myself as a being part of a unit district and being part of a high school district and now as a K8 superintendent I was like oh man we should do that. Um what I think is so unique about the work that you did towards that is that our job as superintendents of elementary districts does not end when they take that not diploma certificate of completion across the stage. It is that we have prepared them for high school and beyond. And I think being able to align your standards, your curriculum, your social emotional needs K12 is really going to set you apart and set your graduates apart from being more successful in their high school and beyond. It starts at kindergarten and working with partners in high school dis or preschool really your earliest learners and that's where it begins. and to be able to have relationships. I know the superintendents of those districts to be able to have those relationships so that they understand, right? It's not just about eighth grade algebra, right? It's about how are we helping to support our earliest learning learners with those early literacy skills, those early math skills so that they can become these fantastic little humans that will grow into socially conscious and global citizens. And so we are very excited to see that work being done here. and to help find a leader that has those same experiences and understanding because

again it is unusual for a KA district to have a portrait of a graduate to do the work that you do and it's important that when we work with you to help find someone who has that vision and that global understanding of what it takes to get through a three-year-old through age 22 if that's where your if that's where your education path leads you. And so we're really excited to work with you on that. We think that you deserve an experienced, unifying, equity focused leader who is skilled communicator, a strong operational manager, you guys got a lot going on with hammers and nails, and a passionate advocate for students and staff. And so again, I think looking at your strategic plan and really focusing on some of this hard work you've done, I know you have dual language programs. my kids were in a dual language program um as well and how important that is and how hard it is to find teachers and staff and to promote that second language learning and really that which helps to then really embed your community um and in and and be more inclusive of cultures and languages. And so having those unique facets of your district sets you apart which is why everyone's looking at district 15 right now. We will not have a shortage of candidates. I can promise you that. But what we will need to do is to sift through and look at that profile and measure those candidates against that that have these experiences, skills, and characteristics to continue the great work that Dr. Hines has done and that you all have done as a school board. And we're very excited about helping you with that work. So, how will we recruit? Oh, dirty there. Um, as we said, we are members of all the organizations. I happen to be the vice chair of Edrad. We represent over 90 school districts in northern Illinois and Cook and Lake County and parts of Mckenry County as well. I we have a wide network. I know all of the superintendents and believe you me people are like what's going on over 50? Huh? What's go I see that's

posted right? It is a place where people want to be. So again, it is not about you will we you will get candidates, but it is the careful articulated process of sifting through those candidates to make sure that they are matching the needs that you have. Again, we have, as you will hear from all of your firms, we have networks with all of the organizations, IASA, AASA, Edra, one of our partners is the executive director of LUDA, the large unit school district association in Illinois. So, we have that um we have that reach and that we will be using that reach. Um and when we talk about marketing and going into social media and and reaching out to the Latino Administrators Association and BIPO and other organizations that might be a little smaller from the national level, but where we know that diverse candidates go to to get support and for professional development. And then we're going to reach out to those to those people. You know, you work very closely with Christina Sanchez Lopez. She and I used to teach together. We've worked really closely together. So, we have individual connections with people that will help to increase your candidate pool. So, that you know, our hope is that your job is really, really hard.

I want you guys to move through your process. The board has questions for you too.

Okay. Okay. So, the the second part in the process would be stakeholder feedback. We kind of mentioned that. Um we anticipate that that would be November December timeline based on I guess just what we've seen out there. Um so you know those groups will be here uh however many days or the time frame that you want us to be here will probably be all three of us hopefully um that we could we could interview your focus groups. Um the value of that feedback as you know everybody wants to have a say. it's your job, but you you represent all of all of your constituents, right? So, you want to be able to say to them like we we want to hear your voice, right? However that comes about, whether it's through the survey or from these focus groups or, you know, one-on-one conversations, whatever it happens to be. Um, so we'll take our direction from you, but we know how valuable this is. Our third step in the process.

Yes. So, and I I I alluded to that already. Um so when we talk about recruiting and screening so we talked about how we would recruit and how we have started that already our screening our our the screening is critical right we don't want to waste anybody's time so we do a thorough review of all documents that will be given to us we have a comprehensive background search that includes using AI to sift through internet and social media presence of um so no surprises with with some of our candidates so that we can get a better picture and make sure that the candidates we are choosing um in embody the v mission and vision of district 15. We'll select a we'll select a pool to interview. We'll narrow that down, bring you a slate of four to six and and then once you are satisfied with that slate, then we will begin scheduling and working on interviews with the board. Again, using that leadership profile from all of your data to measure our candidates against that. Um so the the next uh oops maybe I

keep going one more sorry okay so the selection process you know you're going to choose them right you're you're eventually going to decide but we're going to bring you you know those best candidates however many you want as as um Dr. Coleman mentioned here, however many you say, that's how many we'll bring you. Hopefully, we're making your job very, very difficult. And you say, "Okay, well, we want to bring them all back for a second interview." Haha, probably not. I know how difficult it is to find the time for all of you to meet, you know, together. But for that process, we're here to help. We don't we're not just like bringing you the candidates. Here you go. Now it's now it's you. No. Whatever. Um, we will customize the questions for, you know, based on what you need in your district, right? We've done that already in any searches that we've done. We have taken our our list of questions and, you know, made them align with what you're actually looking for. Um, that's our goal is to give you whatever you need, whether it's first round, second round, both, you know, whatever you need us to do. Um, and then that next step in the process is transition.

So now you've selected a candidate. Yay. However, there's still work to be done. You have to negotiate a contract. You have to come to terms. You have to you have to talk to the other candidate. So this this part of the process is really really important because it's not over just because you have chosen someone. You still need to create that partnership. So what we will do is to help [clears throat] that process by um providing at your at your discretion. We will help to um Oops, just kidding.

Um we will provide contract and negotiations and coaching. We will be the conduit between you and the candidate. Um we will be working to ensure that there is a final contract signed before we notify any other applicants. We are going to work with you in preparing a final press release. We in fact Don just did that last week for for a search that she was doing. We will push out all the announcements and the press releases to social media because people should be excited about who the next superintendent I mean will be sad because Lori's not here but also very excited about who this next person will be and we want to shine a light on this amazing district and and part of that is by sharing who this great new leader that you have chosen will be. In addition to that, we offer this service whether or you know it is up to you, but we can help you to work with your legal counselor to help design performance goals aligned to your strategic plan that can also be embedded into the contract. For example, in my contract with my board, I have performance goals that are listed in my contract that I have to create that meet certain standards. So, we can help you do that if you would like and help to provide that um support to you so that when you are completing this process and you're getting all the eyes dotted and the tees crossed that you come out with a document and with a plan and a framework for your next superintendent of how you're going to support them in the expectations you will have for them moving forward and to make sure that those performance goals are aligned to your strategic plan um as well as to the initiatives that you guys are working toward. And last but not least is we don't just leave you there, right? Our success is your success is the candidate that you choose. So I I put starting in February, I mean as soon as you've named your candidate, I can guarantee you we will start mentoring and coaching and I know Lori will continue to do that as well. But we we have a lot of resources and we do it now. Um I can tell you our our business official has done all kinds

of things. I've coached um the last couple of years with people. I mean, you just to have that that comfort level. Susan's a certified coach and she lives close by, you know, so we're we're here to help that person be successful because that success, you know, shines back on us and so we want it to all work out.

And coaching and mentoring doesn't mean that you're going to get some inexperienced person who doesn't know what they're doing. I have a coach, you know, I've been doing this for a while. I have a coach. Why? Because it's a thought partner. Being a superintendent is a very lonely job if Lori hasn't shared that with you already. Um, and to be able to have a thought partner who you can, you know, bounce ideas off of and who can maybe share some of your experiences regardless of the experience that someone's going to come in with, I think is I'm so sorry. I feel like you're Oh, no. I I see you.

Okay. Uh, and that is um that is something that that I I will I will be the coach for this process if we are selected and and if you um if that is the route you want to go. Anyway, I'm so sorry cuz we're we're jabber jabber. So, [laughter] all right. I think it would be great. We Yes, we only have about two minutes, so we're probably only going to get to maybe one question. Um, so Zubar, do you want to ask our first question or do you have it handy? If not, I can ask it. I have it right here. He had one jaw. [laughter] I'M KIDDING. I'm kidding. I know you have more. It was a big responsibility. He's got it. He's got it.

Okay. So, this is the question. Okay. [laughter] If you could name only one thing that truly differentiates you from other search firms, what would it be? I would say that we are hungry. That we have drive. That's the word I was going to use. Hungry. We are we are new to this particular area and new to this field. Although not not new enough. The name of our company is new. Right. Right.

Under SCES. We don't have a lot of business, but I worked for a previous company and have several searches. Uh did Glenn Ellen, East Main, um Belvadier, just to name a few. And then most recently under our company, I've been a part of all of those. Kristen and I both have. So, um and I know Susan was involved in one before. But our partners, guys, we're we're talking about all these superintendents, um who have done countless assistant soups, um you know, business managers, all of those. We have the connections, we have the resources, and I would say we're we will we will do a fantastic we are hungry to do a fantastic job for you.

And I will also say because we are newer, we do we are flexible in the plan that can be customized to you. It is not a boilerplate. This is how we do a search because we've done a hundred searches and this is what we do and this is what we always do and we are not that group. We are not that firm. We are custo we customize our services to the individual needs of you. And since we do not have a hundred searches under our belt, we can provide that to you um so that you feel like you can also help drive this process to meet your needs.

Awesome. Okay, last [clears throat] question if we can be brief because I know we're wrapping up on time. Um what specific strategies do you use to bring forward high performing candidates, ideally super seated superintendent who may not actively be looking? You mentioned being able to that we're going to have a popular application pool, but how does the process work for you to actually recruit people who are successfully seated?

We've already started. We've already started started talking to people. I know all three of us um on the committee have we talked at our partners meeting and our associates meeting the other night about about it already. Um we'll talk to people one-on-one. We'll reach out. we're we're going to know right away what what those qualities are that you're looking for, right? If if you need somebody with vast financial experience because they're going to have to, you know, look at finances, then then we're going to gravitate towards those types of people. We're going to look at people that that have had some of those experiences already. So, that's how we would do that. We will, trust me, that's what we did with this last search. Rochester does not have a good a good reputation. just they they've had some problems and been written up in the Springfield area. So, it was tough to get candidates and so um the other guy and myself were constantly just making calls to people that we think would be the perfect fit for them. Um and we were calling we were talking them through what it would look like, how it would would be. I think we would do the same thing. I

I know a lot of people. I mean, again, both through my organizations that I lead and through my I have worked all over Lake County and Cook County. So, my personally for me up here, my depth is wide and my reach is far and wide. And because of those relationships that I have because I'm a current sitting superintendent, um it is easy for me to call someone and say, "Hey, I know you've been here a few years, but have you thought about Palatine?" um which is what I did earlier today on you know I said hey you know this is open I don't know if it's open I don't know if you know about it but a lot of it is it's not just the marketing and like putting it on this website and that it is the personal connections that I have that Dawn has that our entire firm has to reach out to prospective candidates because we are going to steal them from another job right unless you know you're you fall in love with someone who maybe is not have superintendent experience but assuming that a seated superintendent is something that's important to you. Like that's our job to pull them away and to be like this is why you should take this next step. This is a great district. It's a big step for someone. And we know those people in those littleer districts who are ready maybe for that next step or who in medium-sized districts. And so that's that is our promise to you. That's what sets us apart with our hunger and our drive. It's not just like the same old candidates that you know apply to everything. It's us reach making those personal connections that we already have um to steal them away from where they are so that

where they're already doing a good job hopefully correct they can do a good job for you continue with Dr. Wonderful. All right. Thank you so much for the materials. It was a pleasure. So, before we leave, and I'm just going to hand this out. So, this is just an example of what our um pamphlet would be. Again, you kind of already started with your um with your the application's already open, right? The search is already kind of done. And so this is just just any sample of So the part we would add to this would be like the the specific qualities that you're looking for in your design. So this kind of gives you an idea of what what it would look like. We're already ready to go.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Nice to meet you. Thanks everybody. Have a great night. Okay. Thank you. You too. All right. You've got a little under you got about eight minutes if you want to get into your scoring uh tab. Yes. Turn your mics off. Oh yeah. And because

Hi. How are you? How are you? I'm big. Good to see you. How are you today? Hi, Jim. Eric. All right.

The handles up. Yeah, may as well handle those. Oh, souvenir. Yeah, souvenir.

Everything should be electronic. But I like I like paper. [laughter] I like paper. I can read it. All right. And if anyone is watching uh on YouTube, we are uh shifting over to IASB um for format. Um as was shared in the email, we're doing 15 minutes of presentation, 15 minutes for uh Q&A as the board has prepared some questions. And then if you would just make sure that the little green light on your microphone is on. Okay. Good. There we go.

Ah, very good. Hi everybody. Uh Jim Helton with the Illinois Association of School Boards. Um I have been with the Illinois Association of School Boards for the last 10 years uh for the last two uh with leadership in executive searches. Um, prior to that, uh, I was a sitting superintendent, a K 12 or preK12. Uh, oh, all right. There we go. Does that work?

All right. I was a uh, superintendent of a pre-K12 district in the metro St. Lewis area of about 3,000 students uh junior high principal and uh for about nine years in the uh downstate and then actually taught in the I80 corridor for 17 years. And so I had my 35 years of education kind of split in half. 17 as a teacher and coach and uh 18 as a administrator as a uh principal title one coordinator and uh superintendent. Vic

uh Vic Zman uh 35 years uh in education 19 in the big chair last 15 in Monaceel four before that in St. Joe Ogden those are right right by Champagne Urbana and Decatur so in central Illinois I've been doing searches with Jim for four years at at ISB and I also work for ISA as a field services director uh mentoring and coaching first second and third year soups. It's great to see you guys. I went to high school for a while in St. Joe. So, funny enough, [laughter] and Jim, we can make we can make this really quick. We were arguing about Cubs versus Socks. Tell me you're [laughter] not a Cardinal fan.

Cardinals. Thanks for coming. [laughter] St. Spartans. [laughter] The maroon and light blue.

All right. Sorry. No. All good. All good. Um and you know, apologies that uh Al Movi couldn't come tonight. He had an appointment as well as Dr. Carmen Allala uh and Tim Boss. Um the team that we've assigned for uh Palletine uh is purposeful. Uh Allan has uh been a longtime uh elementary school superintendent in the Chicago area. Carmen, uh, state school boards superintendent in high diversity and large school experience. And then you also have Tim Bus, uh, Vic Zimmerman and myself that have also served on the ISA board of directors. And so we have statewide contacts with superintendent and uh, also with uh, school board governance. So, all right, I know this. All right, I need to speak into this. Um, we are the market leader in Illinois. Uh we do more than any other firm. Uh we have over 60 years of executive search experience and 300 years of combined consultant experience uh in Illinois. Uh we our network reputation and process allows us to attract a consistently strong pool of candidates. Um and then everything aligns to the foundational principles of which ISB uh you are are part of along whenever you do your uh governance piece. We're the only organization whose primary goal is to serve Illinois boards of education, Illinois public schools. Um whether it's our OGC, our policies, our go our outlook and training, all of those pieces, we support one another within the ISB uh umbrella. And I believe that that's real important. And I think it also adds to our success rate. uh whenever you take a look at the big picture of what we do uh in the state of Illinois,

we have a national organization and an affiliation. Uh we belong to the national affiliation of superintendent searchers. Uh this is 38 states uh schoolboard associations around the state of or around the United States who do this work. Uh it's incredibly important that we have this collaboration with them. Uh it's all school boards. They uh know policy. They know best practices. They know they have integrity and they also know state laws. And so we if we have outofstate applicants, it's real easy to contact these states. we have a contact in every state uh that belongs to this to get the background inquiry of uh any out of state applicant that we have. Um and the other piece of it I think as well is just that integrity piece knowing policies knowing procedures um if if somebody is a crossstate match for Palatine which could possibly be uh having that background and integrity on the backside is is real important. We have a national uh recruiting uh with with our professional organizations are uh IASA ISBO group Illinois principles association uh and then we do a professional advancement seminar with the superintendent association three times a year. So we'll have I think this last spring or this last fall in Lyall uh we had 40 uh potential aspiring superintendents that we will along with the IASA and the superintendent sup association collaborate on what it takes to uh have that right fit to apply and

and to have that contact and and mentoring piece. Um we also have a a robust nationwide outreach. So we said the national affiliation of superintendent searchers. So we are not just a state association. We work in the state of Illinois but we do have that national outreach. We have a online application system. We switch from frontline to Revelis. Revelis has a 17st state reach. And so if you apply and set out a profile in the Revelis application, 17 states can now access that. and we'll have that availability out of state applicants to have that availability uh within our association state board association. We also have the consortium of school boards. Uh so the COSBA group, there's 29 states. Uh we now have a national listing of those states. Everybody that has a schoolboard association, we list them on that national website. And we have that national where we used to have the AASA or now we have the I mean this is a little bit different or NA NASBA now we have the COSBA and we have that national outreach and so we still are able to uh get candidates nationwide. We also have a exclusive professional network of 8,000 educational leaders. some of those super current current superintendent current current assistant superintendent current principles current um school executives uh if they're in human resources HR they belong to our network and every time that if we were to post the position everybody would get an email and so all 8,000 of our folks would get an email saying Palletine is

posted when we would update it with uh let's say vacancy announcement updates or anything else with that 10 days or 10 days out from a closing. Again, all of everything that we would uh send an email out to um would go at least four times and for all of these 8,000 folks. And so that's our curated uh private network that uh they said that they would like to be part of what you know potential superintendent of districts. Now does that mean that all 8,000 will fit Palletine? No, it does not. But we believe that there will be somebody within that group that um would potentially fit your district. the TA timeline that we have uh prepared for you. Uh within the sheet that you have um if you will open that folder there is a proposal an exe executive ser uh service prop executive searches proposal of the points that u we say are going to be part of this search. Um we designate a a search coordinator uh al Dr. Our Alan Moi would be that person. Um we assist the board and establishes a timeline. You can see the timeline that is here. Um we would conduct uh the the board staff and community surveys. This is an online survey that potentially ideal. It really aligns to the professional learning standards of whatever the and it's a 15 uh question or 15 question survey aligning to the professional learning standards that the

board and your stakeholders would force match into uh what they think is most important. Um and then we would tally that and report into a uh into a board me meeting of what was uh each groups. Generally what happens is it's private. So the board would have a private survey. Your staff would have a private survey. Your uh parents guardians would have a private survey. And then if you had stakeholders within the community that you would like to send that to that would be a private survey. we would disagregate that data and then report out that these are the most important pieces uh that that your district is looking for. The other piece that we do um so that would be that could potentially be done in December. Um we also have in district focus groups uh where and we're recommending three days of in district focus groups where we will work with you identifying your stakeholders whether it's representations from your elementary schools, your middle schools, your teachers groups. we would work with you um over a three-day period helping schedule it where we would meet one- on-one with small groups and it works better when we schedule it versus having an open house and having folks come in. You've done a lot of work on your stakeholder group or on your um with your stakeholders for your strategic planning and so they're used to this piece. um it would just rely on us to get that additional information from you on who would you would like to talk to. Um basically what we would do is we would have folks in district that would meet um and it would be you know potentially you know what do you what's

unique about Palatine 15? What do you do well? What are your challenges and what are your ideal traits? And so those are generally the four questions that we ask and then we listen and then we disagregate that out to um to to the board in an open session, open meeting uh after we had done all the stakeholder work and we would work with you to to to get this scheduled uh to find out who you would like for us to talk to. Um anything above and beyond the um three days would be another $1,500 per day. Uh that our proposal would include 3 days of work in district. Um we start at 6:00 in the morning and we can be done at 8:00 at night. I mean it's it's long days. It's not a 5h hour day. Um and so that would be some which is in our proposal. we could do this in December or in uh January and then uh from that information we would uh divide we would have a customized announcement of vacancy and so we would gather information from the board and so we would have just general information of the district. Um we submitted samples within our proposal what a uh announcement of vacancy would be. Uh the bottom line is this would be posted with your post and one of the things that now with uh fair label fair uh wage law uh whenever you post applications you have to have the salary potential with it and and so we would do that and that would be included within your announcement of vacancy and and so that that would be part of uh what we do and it would be you know something to sell the district Um like I said, we submitted prop uh

samples with our uh RFP. Um the other piece of it then would be so that would be the we would put that within the announcement of vacancy. Potentially we could uh have the position close in March where uh consultants then analyze uh applications. We analyze applications based on what you say you're looking for. And so if we had three consultants doing the reading of the applications, first off is we verify their license. We verify that they can do the position. We compare it to your ideal candidate traits. Vic would do, I would do, Al would do, or Carmen would do. We would do it individually and then we would come together and say, "All right, what is Palestine 15 looking for?" And we would have a short list, let's say 10 to 12 folks that we could then do additional interviews with. And we would do a Zoom interview with those additional interviews uh with those additional folks and try to narrow it down to the top five, top six for the board to then interview. screen background. The slate of candidates would then be presented to the board in March. Um we do have a practice interview session. Uh that's an optional point or an optional piece of what we do. um where potentially um Allan would come in, prep the board with regards to proper uh interview protocol. Beck could come in and interview as a candidate and you would have that practice. That would be another $1,500 for that practice interview if the if

the board would be interested in that. We don't have that recommended within our uh proposal. Um we would have the first round of interview in that March April time frame. Um we would come in in close session when we bring to you the uh candidates. Um go over proper training everything that you know for for interview protocols. Um we would present the candidates to you. Uh the confidentiality is extremely important for us. Um, our goal is for all of our candidates to get through round one of interviews with boards confidential. Um, once you get to round two, it's a little bit different, but uh, round one, those uh, probably sitting soup would would need to go back and work in the district that they're working successfully. And so, we have that extremely uh, high level of confidentiality with with what we do. Um and then you would have a second round interview. Now within our second round, our proposal has semi uh finalist stakeholder groups. Semi finalist stakeholder groups are groups that you've chosen. We've done it heterogeneous and homogeneous. If they're homogeneous, it might be a community group. If it's heterogeneous, it's mix and matches community and and staff. But if you wanted to have a staff group, that's what we recommend. or uh and then a community group that would be uh two specific groups. Basically what you're doing is getting input from additional stakeholders. Um and the way we do it is we would monitor it. We we would have a one of our consultants monitoring the process that we would monitor the process making sure questions are illegal etc. In some

instances, we have the questions turned in ahead of time. Um, each candidate, let's say there's two candidates, would have the same formatted questions that have been asked. If the individuals, your stakeholders want to ask the questions, that's fine. If the consultants would ask the questions, that's that's fine. Um, we've done it both ways. But the key is at the end of that, they're not allow they they don't vote. and and all the way through this we we're telling them they don't vote but they basically on a liykered scale rank each candidate against your ideal candidate traits and then we take that data and present it to the board. A lot of times that's in that round two and so if it's a you know in a round two we just did this with the district u pretty recently. Um so board was interviewing candidate A and the stakeholders were doing candidate B. Uh we swish and kind of did a wagon reelo approach and in that instance they only had two finalists but in some they have three. We're able to figure it out. So they would take that 45 minutes to an hour in round two and then at the end of that night we would then just we would then compile that data and give it to the board. And this is what the stakeholders said um of candidate A, candidate B. U and again we we found this works really well because they're not voting on a candidate. They are voting on basic or basically they're ranking them on uh how well the candidate fits your ideal candidate.

Well, that makes sense. Just a quick board. Then do the we have Sorry to interrupt. Just a quick time check. We only have about 10 minutes left. So, if we could get through these next couple slides quickly and then we can switch over to questions. Thank you. Very good.

The rest of that is Yep. Fees for search is 104. uh with recommended at that 179 like we said that's with three days uh recommended um our fees are somewhat um I don't want to say lesser but they are a little bit because you already belong to ISB we're not going to double dip you by being part of ISB and also charging you uh an exorbitant fee on on the search side of it and So that's why that 10,0004 um is a little bit lower uh than some of the other uh folks potentially uh because you already go belong to ISB. We have a 91% uh within the last three years of our contracts, 91% of those folks have have stayed in their job. Um we have a statement of assurance which means that we'll stay with you till the end. uh and a guarant guarantee of service, a one-year guarantee that if that superintendent leaves within that one year, we'll redo that search for free the following year. And we're going we're we're not going anywhere. We're going to be with you. Um you see 55 years, we 85 different counties. We have follow-up training. We we believe that this is really strong. Um we have a starting right workshop with the new superintendent and the new board uh where you can actually have that that's part of full half day that's part of what we do um goal setting for the future. Uh so again part part of our uh uh entire package with ISV mentoring and coaching is done through the ISA. Uh Vic can talk a little bit about that if we we need to get to that point. He's a ISA

um he's one of the mentors. uh if if we need to go down that route. Um a bottom line, we we would love to work with uh Palletine 15 uh and entertain questions. All right. Thank you so much. We will switch over to board questions. Eric, do you mind taking the first one? Sure. Absolutely. Um thanks you for coming out tonight. A lot of good a lot of good information. Um, what have you learned already about District 15 and how does that inform the way you would design and execute the search for us?

Well, um, your, uh, strategic plan was strong. Um, I I I think that was one of the things as we took a look at that, um, that it was strong. Your portrait of a graduate was was was strong. uh those pieces uh as as we're looking at the survey piece uh you know is is that where you know instead of when we do our focus groups is that where we then target on that to say how well you know was the district you know doing their student success belong how well are they doing their facility pieces how well are they and so that would one be one way that we can in integrate it so

okay all right all All right. Thank you. Mhm. Great question for you. Um, if you could name only one thing that uh truly differentiates you from other firms, what would that be?

Well, I think you're going to hear from all the firms that the [clears throat] bottom line is is we're all trying to bring you candidates that fit best with your district. That's why we do the survey as a quantitative piece. Jim talked about the focus groups, meeting individually with with small groups within your district. That gives us a qualitative piece. I think we're really strong uh in those two areas uh to get to know the district as as well as we possibly can to to only bring you candidates that we feel best fit with Palletine 15. Um what also separates us is we do we do more searches than any other uh search firms in the entire state of Illinois. All right. Thank you. With a high success rate.

All right. Uh next question. What specific strategies do you use to bring forward high performing candidates, ideally seated superintendent who may not be actively seeking a new position?

Well, that's a tough one because we don't recruit from that standpoint. I mean, we don't headhunt. We recruit, but we don't headhunt. And so if board has um interest of a candidate, we can have c conversation with that candidate. But bottom line, what we try to do is to sell Palletine CCSD 15. And if we sell the district, then we do our due diligence with advertising. We do our due diligence with having the conversations. Um we have that due diligence. We believe that um that's very strong. Um, and then we follow that up with um our training, our our polic I mean those pieces right there with the starting right I I I think allows us to try to um give give give strong candidates for Paladine. I mean, it's it's interesting that folks say, "Well, you don't recruit." But we do from a standpoint of we're in every school district in the state of Illinois. And um by doing that positively um by doing the workshops that we do by having the IEA um I believe you know kind of I don't want to say so much an alliance but but we we work together well uh that that we're going to find good candidates.

We don't call ourselves head hunters be we work for the school board association. We work for you guys. Yeah, you wouldn't want us to try to poach your superintendent. [laughter] So, I'm sure other boards that that are members of ISB wouldn't want us to try to poach their superintendents. But Awesome. All right. Yep. Uh, so how do you evaluate a candidate's capacity to lead a large, complex, and highly diverse district like ours?

Well, most of that comes from your ideal candidate. I mean it. So we'll do the work on the back end to define what that is and what that looks like. And you're right, I mean each district's a little bit different. um by doing that work and then having additional conversations and having exhibits of those conversations h having those uh when we do pre-screening having those additional questions of that and requiring exhibits of that uh of that success would would be one way that that we can do it. We contact as many of their references as they're listed in their uh packet up to the point where if they don't want us to contact their existing uh school district, we won't do that because of confidentiality reasons. We want to try to protect the confidentiality of the candidates, especially if we have sitting soups. Like Jim said earlier, if we have sitting soups that have applied and they don't want their board to know um that they're out there looking um because if they don't get the job, they got to come back and still be the superintendent of the district. So, we try to do that as confidentiality as confidentially as we possibly can. So, you talked about your um success rate um but can you tell us about um a search that your firm had completed that didn't go as um planned and what did you learn and how did how did that shape your approach for future searches? Well, potentially a search that that we were doing. Um, the board felt um that the ideal candidate or the ideal candidate didn't include an internal um

an internal candidate. And and so what has happened or what happened in that instance was what we try to do is um work with boards to identify do you want your what's your district culture? Your district culture defines how you want to treat internal candidates. And so this board changed their mind on how they wanted to treat an internal candidate. And so because of that fact, the search I think kind of went arry because of that. Defining that on the front side is incredibly important. Every there's 850 districts in the state of Illinois. There's probably 850 different ways districts want to ch want to treat internal candidates. And and so we get that on the front side on the on on right up front. If you have internal candidates, how do you want them to be treated? Do you want them to work their way through the process? Do you want them to be [clears throat] part of the six plus one? Do you want them What happened in this instance was the board changed their mind because of political pressure. Um and I think what we try to do is articulate that time and time again. and and I think um that's one of I mean if we learn from it I I think that that's one of the things we've learned from it. So anything

I can I ask just a really quick clarifying question. What changed with regard to the uh what the board was going to do with internal candidates versus what they decided to do? It was a process that [clears throat] what changed was they wanted the internal candidate to work their way through to be one of the top six and they changed their mind and included them when we did not include them. Gotcha. Okay. All right. And and so that's that political pressure on the back side of it. And every place is a little bit different.

Thanks. Hate to say it, but [laughter] it's great insight. True. All right, that brings us to time. Thank you so much for your time and making the trip up here. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. And again, apologize that Mr. Mo is not here, but uh no worries.

Hello. Good evening. Good evening.

[clears throat] Hi Samantha. Nice to meet you. Thank you. Hi Samantha. Nice to meet you. Just a little. Just a little.

Yeah. Yeah. And then I'm What a surprise. Probably. Probably. [laughter] Jeez. Oh lord. Do we control the um Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. Exactly. And then if you just make sure that the little green light is on on your microphone and that you you don't have to speak right into it, but that you're relatively close. And then So it's easier this than that. Yeah. Otherwise, you have to hold to move around. Oh. And then just as a just push once you don't have to push every time. There we go. Then it just stays on. I like it. Um, [laughter] and then just a reminder that we're asking for presentations to be up to 15 minutes. So then we have time for Q&A as well. You got it. Awesome. Thank you so much.

We're going to give you, you know, plenty of ample time to uh ask us some questions. So uh we'll introduce ourselves again. It's nice to see three of you who we worked with six years ago, you know, seven years. Seven years ago. So that is great. It's like old home. And and we're we were just patting each other on the back on the way here saying we're so close. I'm 15 minutes. What are you 16 minutes? I live in Arlington. [clears throat] I'm in Buffalo Grove. You know, it's like sometimes we're all over the area. So, this is dream come true. We love it. So, Joe, you want to start?

Sure. I'm Joe Porto. I'm a retired superintendent. I was a superintendent for 17 years. My last 10 were in Aoka district 37 which is in Wilmet. I've done an interim and I've been a professor in uh at Northern. But what I really wanted to say is I had a 33-year career. I retired in 2011. But the very first year 1978 I got my first job here in district 15. I was a fifth grade teacher at Virginia Lake school and the kids would come here if I remember correctly after their time at Virginia Lake. And um my wife also um started her math teaching career at um Plum Grove. So this district's been very close to me and my family.

Yeah. You had that special connection. Yeah. And I'm Mark Freriedman, retired superintendent. I was in Libertyville for 17 years and after that uh sort of as we all say in the superintendent business failed retirement. Our our friend Glenn Schlicking has coined that phrase failed at retirement. And so, um, I did four interim superintendent jobs in Wetka, Niles Township High Schools, uh, Elkrove Village District 59, and then Joe and I did the last one together right at the pandemic was coming in Hawthorne in Vernon Hills and helped pass the referendum with Lor's help because she lives in that district. So, um, we have had good careers and we turned it into this business, uh, superintendent searches, but we've branched out even more so. And we are probably over 500 and you name it, from superintendent to principal to assistant superintendent, business man. We do a lot of business manager placements lately. Those are very difficult to do. And so we're everywhere. We're doing it and we really enjoy it except, you know, when we have to travel to the other side of the Chicago area. That's why we're so happy to be here tonight. So, uh, tonight, am I getting at the right?

I think you skipped a page, but we don't we don't need to do the questions. Yes.

Yeah. And tonight we're going to, you know, just tell you a little bit about ourselves, uh, introduce ourselves, which we've done, talk about our process, which we customize for district 15. We don't just do the same thing everywhere we go. And there's some specifics for district 15 that we want to highlight and talk a little about a little bit about our recruitment and you know if there are any internal candidates and how we deal with because it's always tricky for boards of education when you have inside candidates and uh we have condensed the search timeline to make it very realistic and sort of expedited. So those are the things we're going to will walk you through. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. Next one. There we go.

You better do it, Lori. [laughter] Counterintuitive. Everyone thinks you actually ah okay. That's the secret. That's the secret. [laughter] You can just say next slide.

Okay. So, in a customized search process that we have, uh, are there any specific things that the board would like to see in this process? Well, we'll work through with you to do that. It's not like, okay, here's our plan. Go live with it. No, we want this to be an active kind of a search that reflects your thinking and your needs as a board, as individual board members. And it's worked. It works really well. we wouldn't be back here. It worked seven years ago. Um, we want to talk a little bit about an open versus a closed slashconfidential search. Today, searches are mostly done from a confidential perspective. That means we we shelter the names of the candidates. We don't have uh mass groups of interviewees. We we shrink that down. We have as little contact with the finalists as possible because it's a buyer market. And when it's a buyer market like it is today, we're getting 50 60. We're finishing a search in the South Suburbs right now. Today, there are 67 applicants. A year ago, if we had 30, we were happy. So, that's what changed right now. So, we're we're going to cater to that buyer market. We can't just be arrogant about it and say, "Oh, we're District 15. We're putting our our notice out and everyone's going to flock to us." We've got to work at it a little bit. Uh we'll take nominations from you board members if you have any. And then again, we'll talk about this expedited timeline. So, Joe, you want to hit on that next? The BWP piece? Next slide. Sure. Whoops.

That's not in order. There we go. There we go. No, one more. It's It says PWP and Associates at the top. That's There we go. Yeah.

So, we're a national firm, although we do a lot of searches. Our kind of specialty area is the Chicago suburban area, but we're a national firm. We we attract candidates from all across the country. I just did a search last night presented to a board and 10 states were represented in the applicant pool which we were proud of. We've done over 500 searches. There's another slide coming up. We'll show you some districts in the area. We know you guys very well and we're really proud of our record. 99% of our placements complete their first contract. We have not had to go back and redo. We have a guarantee. Haven't had to do that. Even more impressive, 95% not only get through the first contract, but go on to a second contract. And you can Google us as deeply as you'd like. You won't see any lawsuits. You won't see anything. And there isn't another firm out there that could make that claim.

Be great. He's um Go ahead.

Yeah. No, I was going to say this is we're not going to go through every one of them. This is just a little sample of neighbors that we've done the districts around the area. Everybody knows us. And the good part about it is it's not we're not here doing a sales pitch and then go away and somebody else comes in. We do the work ourselves. So, we're the ones rolling up our sleeves. We will bring in because of this district, we'll bring in a couple of our associates to help us, especially if we do uh groups in community groups and and groups of teachers and stuff like that. We'll we'll bring in some additional people all part of our organization. So, it's you can be rest assured that those numbers here, you can double, triple, quadruple that. We we know that we're again probably the leading group in this area as far as doing searches for these size districts.

We don't put that slide up just so that we can fill a page and make it look impressive. The key to a successful search is the match between the district and what the district needs and what the candidate brings. And we know this community. We did your last search. We live in the area. We've done searches all around you. We feel very confident that we know what the district 15 district needs and we know exactly who to look for. Phase one, I think the slide right before that. Phase one, there it is.

Okay, we're just going to highlight it. We're watching time. Phase one, we have several phases to this search process. We determine the type of search, the open, close, hybrid, so on and so forth. We set the timeline. We develop a marketing plan. We work with you so you understand what's included in that. That's on the very front end. Then we move to phase two and we do phone interviews with all those of you who are on the board. The last time I think you remember we called you, we interviewed you on the phone, we put together a a a package of information based upon the results of those conversations. Then we do focus groups as many as you want. We generally work with the district to determine what types and the number of focus groups you can have. A district this size, you can have a hundred. We do it realistically. And I'll be honest, nowadays people don't come to those things anymore. So, we rely on a survey. I know you've already started on something like that and we we factored some of that in to our timeline. So, we think that's a help that that you've got a little bit of a head start on that. So, that's all good.

If I could just add one thing for

um I do think this is one area where we stand out. The result of the interviews and the survey and the focus groups is a leadership profile. It will summarize the strengths of your district, the areas where we could um do some growth, and then the specific characteristics of the superintendent that's perfect for you. And we then use that leadership profile for everything. We use it for recruitment. We use it in our vacancy notices. We use it when we craft questions and do the initial interviews. It'll be a big part of your first round and second round interviews. And we create a rubric using the leadership profile that will help you assess the candidates. So I think that's just a very important piece to to mention. Mark,

phase three is just our recruitment process. We advertise, we take nominations, but we do heavy networking. That's where we're really, really good at. and we know who's out there, who's looking, who's successful, and we need to tap them on the shoulder. That's what we did 7 years ago when we went over to Park Ridge and got them mad at us. Lori will tell you she was not even thinking about another job. I worked I worked at one of the teachers. Oh, you remembered that then? At that time, she didn't even know she wanted another job.

I'm so thankful. to recall that time. One of the things that was very compelling during the interview process is Mark said very specifically to me that our board was high functioning and we he could sell the board and and he was like all I've got to do is show a few videos of you and we can recruit some great candidates. So right then that's the number one thing candidates ask us. They don't ask us the co the money. They'll ask that later. It's the board. First question. [laughter] How's the board? They will forget about the

how's the board? Very important. [laughter] Yeah. Very much important. And it was so they were so mad in Park Ridge that they refused to hire us to replace Lord. [laughter] But then they hired us the next go round because they forgave us.

Well, Mark will never toot his own horn, so I'm going to do it. This is the second place where we really excel and I think we stand out from other groups. This guy here knows every educator in the state of Illinois and in many other states. He's the best networker I've ever met. And he always remembers people, too. doesn't forget a face. So when he bolds heavy networking, he he means it. That's that's where we excel. I like to say we're not like the movie Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come. We don't just put up the vacancy notice and cross our fingers and hope they will come. We go and get you.

Yeah. It's it's like I said earlier, buyers market. You got to do stuff to be out there. you can't wait for it to all land in your lap. It just doesn't happen anymore. And I don't know if it's temporary or it's permanent, but that's the way things are. We just presented a slate in the area. And I think four or five out of the six candidates were not people who just applied from the vacancy notice. They were people we called and said, "This is the perfect match for you." So, we're proud of that.

Yeah. Phase four, we'll move quickly so you can ask us questions. Uh we will do all the prep stuff. Those of you who were on the board last time, remember we did a workshop. We walked you through question development, prepared you for the next step of the process, which is interviewing, which ultimately is your responsibility. But we want you to have all the tools in order to you make those interviews go well so that the candidates can say, "Hey, that's a high functioning board, Lisa." I'll quote you, "A high functioning board. That's a board that I would like to work with." Because people giving up a solid good job, they want to know that there's some good chance that it's going to be a good place to go to. And that's hard to convince. We've got to really work hard at that. We'll we'll give you all the prep in order to do the interviews and then we'll actually help at the end uh helping you employ the superintendent, transition time, all those kinds of things, working with the outgoing superintendent. We're we're just kind of handholding all the way through. And I think we we did that the last time around and it worked really really well.

So, we've moved up to the proposed timeline. Let's go to the timeline [clears throat]

so we can then give you question time and we've kind of condensed a timeline. So that phase one we talked about, we're saying that's November and December knowing that November is a tough month. I mean this is with so many things happening with the conference this week with uh Thanksgiving next week and most school districts are off Monday, Tuesday. I I don't know how this district's calendar works. Parent teacher count. So it's kind of like a lame week. So it gets back going in December. Then phase two and three, December and January, you can have you could be interviewing your candidates in January and be hiring in February just because you can't control you may be done in January, want to hire in January. The thing about it is the attorneys have to exchange contractor. Sometimes that takes two weeks. And so we don't want to overpromise on how quickly those kinds of things can happen at the end. But once you get all the other pieces out of the way, it'll do it.

Customize this. If if you think it's too fast or if you want it even faster, we'll work with you. We'll make it happen. What was that one district we did in 43 days? Harvard. Yeah. They gave us an unbelievable timeline and we came with six great candidates and they loved it. So yeah, we can make anything happen. It can be done. You don't want to rush it though because there's no reason. You know, Lori will be here till June 30th or whatever the Friday is. And the last 30th June 30th, [laughter]

I have a feeling they will. And yeah, that'll be celebratory day or sad day. [laughter] Well, a little bit of both. But um though, you know, we will give you plenty of opportunity for transition time. So, don't feel rushed and don't feel like, oh, we got to get this done because we won't get the candidates. It's not about that. It's the right match. We'll get them. Yeah. You don't you don't just want anybody otherwise you'll regret that. We we put a a cost on this.

Oops. We put a cost on this of of 199. There's some administrative stuff. Otherwise, there's not much. If you want to do an advertising with the American Associated School Administrators, it's about $400. That's about it. Um, there could be some out ofstate candidates that normally the district picks up their costs for travel, but that would be it. So there's no big hidden agenda, lots of little extra bills, those kind of things. No surprises.

And then finally, that last page, why us? There's a whole bunch of reasons there. The last one, we live in the area. It's for our own interest. [laughter] We have we have to Yeah, I just finished this search last night and not finished. It wasn't You had to drive all over. So, and that's the fifth time I've had to drive up [laughter] there. So, when I was driving here, it was 15 minutes. It was wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. It's all all good. My favorite little sandwich shop called Jerry's Jerry's on our other That's by his house. Yeah. We should mention the guarantee in the men, too.

Yeah. And obviously we guarantee we will guarantee the uh contract for the first two years and if it doesn't work out for either any reason basically we will redo the search. We've never had to do that. Knock on wood. Um but yet we want that out there. also you know any additional support we're here for a year per uh after you make the hire and after the new person starts that first year we're there supporting that person I I hate to use the word mentoring that person because that's kind of an old word we support and provide the camaraderie the closeness whatever it is to help that new person adjust feel who they may interact with in the area, other superintendents, we smooth it out for them. So, we're around and that's another advantage of us being right nearby. We're available to do those kinds of things. And so, that's our presentation. I know we were right on we went a little bit over, but

thank you so much. Uh, all right, we will switch over to questions. Frank, you want to go first? Getting ready for one. you guys. Uh, yeah, I think you may have covered it. I think you might have already covered it as far as what makes you guys unique and how you stand out from other design uh, sorry, not design, other search firms. I don't say design firms. Uh, it's back to what I used to do. [laughter] Yeah, your referendum's done, building, but but I think you guys kind of covered that quite a bit as to it's right there on the on the board there. So, okay. But, uh, yeah. So, thanks for that answering in advance.

All right. So we can move to second question which was um and you have extensive history here. So what have you already learned about district 15 and how does that inform the way you would design and execute this search for us? That's a good question. Start. Go ahead if you want. Well your district is one of the largest elementary districts in the state. So, it's obviously a little more the largest, it's a little more complex than um other districts. You're also incredibly diverse community.

And I think those two things are going to be really important in how we advertise the search and who we look for and how that leadership profile is going to be crafted. I can't imagine this being um an easy first superintendency for somebody. Um so we're probably going to be heavily looking for seated superintendent, although people from large districts who have roles like deputy superintendent and have had good experience working directly with boards. We've had good candidates come through that, but it's gonna have to be someone who is um experienced with the uh size and the diversity of your district

and hands-on. I I know Lori style and she's out and about. She's not sitting in the office all day and watching her plant grow. And there's there's a need [laughter] the [laughter]

the need for somebody that has some energy that will undertake the vastness of the size of this district and the number of schools. You don't want to have a school. My daughter teaches in 211 and um she said all the teachers talk about is they want to see the superintendent stop by sometime. So, I met the new superintendent and I said, "You need to go over to Conan High School and you need to go to the World Languages Department and you need to visit them because they haven't seen a superintendent in years." And it's truly important and that's the kind of thing that helps guarantee some of the success that a superintendent has. Little stuff like that. And so, we're very sensitive to those kinds of things. we would impart on a new person to make sure they did stuff like that.

And there's vast differences. There's um you know your Mary and Jordan area and you know the upper end of affluence down to apartments and subsidized uh houses and then everything in between. One of the things I loved about Virginia Lake, we had that really cool neighborhood right around the school. they were on the more affluent side, but then we took in the apartments and such on Rand Road and it was a a cool mix. And I'm saying this leading to I think we have to make sure too that we cast the net really wide and make sure um we're looking for qualified candidates, people of color and under represented uh folks um because of so much diversity in the district. We don't ever set quotas or anything like that, but we also don't just sit and hope the right people apply. So, we would hope to bring you a diverse slate.

That kind of leads into the next question. We obviously know the end result results work well. Um, but what specific strategies do you use to bring forward those high performing candidates, ideally seated superintendent who may not be actively seeking a new position? Well, I think basic first of all, you've got to be out there and interacting with those people who are in those roles and meetings, conferences, uh, events of some kind that attract superintendents and it's it's like triple conference, we're going to be camped out and just being there and interacting with people. So yes, you can target some, you can look at some individuals and say that person is absolutely perfect for this job and individually take them to lunch, call them, whatever it is. People are flattered when they're approached and they feel really good when someone comes up to them and says, "You'd be great for this job." It's hard for people to say, "Really? Do you think so?" Oh, well, maybe I should put my hat in. And I said, 'We'll make it real easy for you. And the key is there are there's a crew of people that would take a look, but we have to be careful because many of them if they don't feel their name and their position is guarded, if it's confidential, they won't risk it because they'll risk alienating their home district.

Fine line to walk. Yeah, fine line to walk for a seated superintendent. So, it's going out individually, talking to them, you know, asking them to follow up on things uh like take a look at this. Here's the basic information. It's if it uh relates to you, let's talk some more. You can't hit them over the head. You have to make it enticing. The other thing is while we might be the team, we have our whole crew team. When we do a search, we let everybody know, hey, we got this search and some of our um uh partners are high ranking officials in associations for black administrators, for instance, um Hispanic administrators, and they have roles and participate in those. So, we'll get that out to our partners as well as us.

Yeah. As a matter of fact, you know, should we work on this and as I mentioned earlier, we'll bring some of our associates along and we'll bring a Spanish- speaking associate along. And well, Brian Brian and Lucilla both are Spanish speaking. Yeah. So we will cover that base to make sure that the major portion of your population is Spanish speaking. So that helps during the day in the district where we do the focus groups. Community feels very much at ease when they hear a Spanish speaking consultant. And we have translation devices that we use in all of our events. I love those things.

So that really helps because we have 86 languages. Although our largest is, you know, you're absolutely right, is is Spanish. Hispanic. Um, we have many others. So, we have these great tools that we use for with our BPACK or EMPAC meetings so everyone feels as though they can hear and participate in their own language. Okay, last question. Um, I love that you um but not least.

Yeah, [laughter] I love that you said that um you're going to find the right match for us and um and that's wonderful your success rate, but um we want to hear about those that you um the instances where there was not a right match. Um, tell us when um your search didn't go as planned, what did you learn and how's that shaped your approach for the next school district? I could do that. Um,

can't think of anything but one. Yeah. Um, I was doing a search up in Wisconsin, big big district, and um, we got down to two candidates, and the board had a history of having the finalists come back for a day in the district. And I tried desperately to talk them out of doing that because nothing but bad things happen [laughter] when you do that. nothing but bad things can happen and nothing good comes from it. So, um, not that I don't have a position on this, right? [laughter] I might,

but anyway, they had to go and do that. So, we did the day in the district. We tried our best to police it and there were coalitions within the community that didn't like the board and so they talked to the candidate and bashed the board. Bash the board. Bash the board. We had a candidate pull out at the end of the day. And so all of a sudden we're down to one candidate and they had to make a choice. Do we just go with the other one because that's the only one left standing? Do [clears throat] we reopen? It was a mess. It all worked out, but that was not that was a tough one.

Yeah. The only the only thing about a placed superintendent that didn't work out, we placed a superintendent in a community out by Decalp and um she got on board and her husband was an officer in the state police and he got a job offer. I think it was Oregon or Washington state police uh pro promotion and they had to move. Either she stayed and kept her job as superintendent and he gave up the job or he took the job and she gave up her superintendent job. So she decided she had to follow his career and so she left high and dry in the middle of the year [laughter] and the super the board president called what do we do? I said I've never dealt had this happen before. It was it's a positive thing. It's not [clears throat] like somebody did something wrong. So, we came up with a little plan. We promoted the principal and he actually wound up staying for a long time. So, it actually worked out really well. But, you know, these are things in life that sometimes you can't predict. Other than that, I've never had nothing else.

Fortunately, they go pretty well. Yeah. Knock on wood. Yeah. Right. We keep and we're not just saying that. That's the truth. We have not had and again no legal troubles. No. [laughter] Nobody ever overemphasizing. You're you're all witnesses. Does anybody ever have [laughter] the lawyer on the board? It has a lot of uh you know you you protest too much maybe. [laughter] There we go. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time and for coming on the short trip that it was. We appreciate it. Thank you everybody. This short trip, it was worth it. I mean, you know,

Yeah, I know. We're coming. [laughter] Thanks, Joe. Bye. Nice to meet you.

How you doing? Perfect timing. Good. How's everybody here doing? I think so. Well fed and hydrated. Okay, good. Be a lot worse. You deserve it than that. We've been here at 11 before, so Okay. Well, not that many times. We appreciate you taking the time. Hopefully the community does too. All the hours you're putting in for this particularly tonight. Thank you. All right, we've got Just make sure that the little green light is on on your microphone. You don't have to talk directly into it, but you just have to be close enough. Um and then if we could do 15 minutes presentation, then save 15 minutes for Q&A afterwards. Sound [clears throat] good? Sure. All right. Thank you so much. Gotcha.

You got me. All right. All right. Okay, here we go.

Okay, as you saw in the first slide, uh my name is Kane Osbbor, uh associate with HYA, my associate, Dr. Karen Sullivan. We're excited to be with you tonight and we will try to be as uh concise as we possibly can to honor your time and your energy. Um we are going to go through the proposal uh but not in as much detail. You have it in front of you. So really the focus is highlighting a few things and answering some questions. We did want to highlight this because we always have a slide that talks about the importance of this search, but I took this from your web page because you had this listed as the number one item that is important for the board to do here. So, I think that's important for the community to remember too. And then our job is to help you do that job as well as possible and to exceed the community's expectations in the search itself and the hire. So, we won't go into detail on this, but we always like to dive in and learn about the district that we're potentially working for. These are just some highlights. Some are standard, some are things that really make you stand out, right? But the biggest and most important part we think on this slide is what's at the top and that is this is a large complex district and that requires a lot of particular attention. So, I've been a deputy superintendent, for instance, in Neapville 203 with 16,000 students. Karen has been superintendent in Indian Prairie with 28,000 students at the time. Um, and we have a great appreciation for what it means to have a large complex system that covers multiple communities, multiple diverse communities economically, socially, and in multiple ways. And we believe that with that background, that is one of the things that will distinguish us from some other search firms. So, why us? Um, I will not read at any point tonight every word that's on a slide. Uh, but we do want to emphasize what's on the left real quick. And that is despite all the data that you might

have in front of you, it will be the human interactions that will be at the core of what leads to a successful decision. the interactions that we have with you to learn about what is most important, the interactions we have with the community members, and then the interactions that you have with candidates and that we have with candidates because ultimately we will bring a slate to you and we want to make sure that those human interactions result in a match. And so that's the human part of this process. The search itself I'll only emphasize because you've heard a lot tonight and uh a lot of fundamentals of the search will be the same. We like to emphasize one thing and that is it's customizable. So you have a proposal with a lot in front of you. But at that first meeting we would have with you after you hire us. We would go through that and see what do we want to customize and then at certain milestones along the way we would check in and make sure is this going the way that we needed to and wanted to and what might we need to change at any given moment and that plays into the feedback that we constantly want to be getting from you. And then finally, we'll talk a little more about it. We are an accomplished firm, 38 years in the business. Um, national reach. We believe in assertive recruitment. So certainly you're going to get a lot of candidates coming to you, but we don't want to leave it at that. We believe with our capabilities, we should be going out and getting good matches for you. And this is just a little more about our firm. You can see some of the other firms that might have been here tonight. Um, but on the right is HYA for the last three years and how many searches we've conducted. um and some statistics related to those searches and the candidates hired. Um, one of the big pluses for us is the website that we have that has a national reach because we don't just advertise the searches we're doing. We actually advertise all the searches, but what that does is it

brings candidates from a much wider catchment into learn about this the searches that we are leading. There's a little more about the firm there. some details that might be relevant, but it's on the right. The three things I want to really four things I really want to focus on. We do have a national reach, probably more so than any other firm that you'll have in front of you tonight. We have an a robust infrastructure. So, we have full-time staff in the back office. Some firms do, some firms only hire part-time people to work on searches as they come up. We have full-time staff working all the time. And then local knowledge, that's us. Um, but also the networks that we've built over time, and Karen will mention this too, but we're still currently working with districts on certain projects and certain um, for instance, this grant project that we partner on. So, we're regularly in touch with superintendent in the field right now and hearing and understanding what they're doing and using that to our advantage in a search. And then finally, dedicated to your district. We won't have multiple searches going on at the same time in this time frame. Um we'll be able to dedicate ourselves to you over this time frame that you have for this search. Um and that will make a difference we think in us being able to access both you and our networks. And this is a little more about who we are. Obviously you see Dr. Sullivan and I uh van uh FA Prissert is a third partner with us. He's an associate and he's not here tonight. He will actually because of the size of your district, we brought him on board to help us with a lot of the community focus and parent focus groups. Um he is a veteran leader superintendent. He's also been head of school at Francis Parker downtown. Um and he will be a great asset to have

along the way. But Dr. Sullivan and I will be your point people.

Are you going to tell them about you at all? Oh. Uh, I guess I could, but you do have our bios in your in your in the proposal, so we're going to be careful on time. Uh, I will say quickly, uh, I am a retired superintendent. Um, I'm flunking retirement, but happily. [laughter] Um, I finished my career at a VOCA school district in Wilmouth, uh, K8 district, uh, but a small one. Before that, I was superintendent at Lake Zurich, a community K12 district in Lake Zurich, Illinois. and prior to that, deputy superintendent in Nepville 203 where Dr. Sullivan and I got to know each other just down the road. Um, and I'm a recovering high school principal and high school English teacher way back.

Um, and I I like to say that I started in high school and all my high school friends think that's where the magic happens. And I ended my career as a K8 superintendent and came to the belief that actually about K3 is where the magic really happens. Um, and I love the arc of my career and I feel very grateful. But it's also afforded me a lot of access and insights that I wouldn't have had if I had only been in one kind of part of the sector. And I I'll say the magic actually starts at early childhood because it's some of my background. So I believe in K that that K3 part, but go all the way down to early childhood. Okay. Put the print.

That's right. Um, so my background, uh, Karen Sullivan, my background is is a little different. I have a maybe a non-traditional path to the superintendency. My background is actually in special education. I was a speech language pathologist and special educator. Um, and uh, ended up going over to the dark side, my special ed friends would say, into the gened side where I been a building principal. I've been assistant soup for HR, assistant soup for curriculum instruction, and finished my career as superintendent. the majority of my career was at Indian Prairie in a large large district. Um, uh, where I, you know, spent a good chunk of time and where I got to know um, Kane from the other side of town. U, we covered Neighborville and Aurora. Very diverse school district, not unlike you here. A lot of different languages spoken. Uh, a very interesting uh, district which I loved, but retired from in 2020. And like Kane, I've I've failed miserably. Um but I've done some continued work um with on some federal grants with KA, some work with the DuPage Regional Office of Education, um and on my work here with HYA. So we stayed very connected to the field. And I think that's, you know, one of the things we both know large districts and we're both very connected with the Chicago market downstate. There probably isn't a superintendent that you couldn't name that we don't one of us have some relationship with or know. Um, and then when you when uh Kane talked about the national reach, if you would and I would think that this job would attract some outofstate applicants because of our um infrastructure and the number of associates we have across the country, we can find someone who knows that person or can find people who know that because we like to do those off the resume kinds of background checks.

All right, so do this. Oh, I do too. Okay, I'll use this one though. Okay, so I think we're the fourth firm that you've heard from today. So, you guys should have the search process down [laughter] path, right? Because honestly, you know, we [clears throat] all do similar things as part of that search process. So, I I'm hoping that I just highlight some of the things that I think that are maybe unique to HYA or are different for us. But, I think you you've probably heard all of us talk about those the areas of the processes of the search, engaging your community um to find out what's important to them, what's important to you for your next leader. That recruitment piece, which we'll talk about and and Kane mentioned, we believe in active recruitment, not passive recruitment. Um not just passive recruitment. the selection phase and we'll talk about some of those pieces and then transition. So those are all I think similar um uh process pieces that you've probably heard. One of the things that I think that um is a differentiator for us is you will have access to a confidential board portal that we would create just for you. So board members would have 247 access. We would put any and everything that we generate as part of this search there. You'd be able to access it on your laptop, on your tablet, on your phone so that you know you wouldn't have to, you know, call someone in the middle of the night if you were dying, you know, dying to do something in the middle, you know, couldn't get to sleep and let let me look and see what was that timeline that we talked about. It's all there in this board portal for you. So, um that I think is um something that we offer and we would set that up right away. In this process, this is the engage process. As Kane mentioned, one of the first things we would want to do is meet with you and have a planning meeting and really go through the entire process,

the timeline, ensure that we know um exactly what you want, how we can customize the search for you. Um so we would want and part of that process would be to interview each of you individually and anyone else that you think we should interview individually. Different boards have different ideas about that. Um we would also identify which groups that you would want focus groups done whether that's staff whether that's could be some of your students. It could be you know different various community groups. We will talk about that. Um and then if you want to just have a whole group kind of community forum open forum for folks as well. And then you have already started a survey that's already out there. So what we would do is take gather the data from all these other pieces along with hopefully the broad data from your survey to develop a leadership profile report which we would present to you which would really um delineate for you what your community and what you all want to see in your next leader whether what you desire those attributes and characteristics. One of the other differentiators for us is we will also provide um a data report, a data brief which will have student achievement data and district finance kind of data, other district data that we will include as part of that leadership profile report because that profile report is not only for you, it's also for candidates who are coming to look at this position. So it gives them some further background information. And it's also information that you all can use um perhaps as we talk a little bit later about the uh interview process for a performance task that you might want them to do as part of the interview process. Again, this just lists some of the um constituents that you might want to think about in terms of pulling together focus groups who you'd want us to go out and talk to. We can do that virtually, we can do that in person, whatever works out. We do combinations, frankly, we've

found in some cases we've gotten better attendance virtually. Um, especially sometimes for parents because it's easier for them to get to. I think we've lived through that time that I won't name where we've all learned how to do some of those things. Say, yes, we won't say it. Um, but we do whatever you want us to do in that respect. Yeah. One thing I'll add is we look to work with the calendar that's already in place to identify groups that might already be meeting and leverage off of those whenever possible and appropriate. So, we're not adding more to the calendar if we can avoid it. But we of course do that because access for your parent community is going to be key for getting the input.

Recruit phase. We've just we've mentioned we talked about the fact that we like to do um active recruitment. Our data from HYA has shown that 75% of the superintendents that we place are people that we have actively actively recruited. Meaning they weren't people that are out looking for a job and just applied. They were people that got tapped and said, "Hey Kane, have you heard about Palatine 15? What a this is a great opportunity. Let me tell you about this district. You might want to consider it." So we really do work at that. Um we mentioned that we have this, you know, national reach. you're you're without spending another dollar of advertising, you'll get national advertising with HYA. Um, and we have this diverse network of colleagues that can help us recruit. We continually hear from colleagues about the searches that they're doing and are asked to, you know, think of candidates to help recruit candidates for those searches even if they're not ones that we're working on specifically. I did that today. Had that happened to me today. Select process. Um so one of the things that we will do um is screen all of the candidates who come through that are qualified. We will say that that are qualified. Um we'll do conduct reference checks. We also do off the resume reference checks. Matter of fact, that's usually where we start. Um because generally the people that folks put on their resume are always going to say great things about them. We want to know all the other things if there are any other things. We will present a slate of candidates. You tell us how many you would like. We will present a slate of candidates that we recommend, but you this is your search. You decide who you're going to interview um and who you want to interview. Um we will share with you all applicants if you want us to. Um so that that really is something that we would talk about and and a decision point that you all would need to make. Um we will support the board um and prepare you for the interview process.

We use that leadership profile report. We do not have a canned set of questions that we that we do in screening interviews or otherwise. They're all based off what's important in a leader for your school district. So, we use that leadership profile report to do our screening interviews. We would also assist you in developing um questions that you might ask in an interview or give you some possibilities for you to choose from. Um not choose from, but try to help you with that. And we'd also always recommend some sort of performance task in the interview process, usually for a second interview, um where you would ask the candidate maybe to do a presentation on a topic that maybe is really important to you so that you see them in a different um light other than just a question and answer kind of thing. So that's part of it.

Just a couple other things related to that. One, we do not recommend any candidate for hire. We don't tell you you should hire candidate X or Y. We will, if helpful, work with you on a consensus process. So when you have candidates to deliver on, we can give you process steps that can help you come to consensus in an organized, clear way because sometimes that can get a little messy. But we've been, having been there a lot, we can help facilitate that as part of this. And then we also mentioned and it's in our proposal, we do and we will recommend a third-party background check that goes into something deeper than what we can do with just our own little Google searches and other thing, you know, candidate uh reference checks. It would be it's it's an additional cost. It's a company that we use. Um but we would highly recommend that you do that at least on your finalist before um you make that big decision. And then finally, um, one of the other differentiators I think for HYA is your your, uh, new superintendent would be automatically signed up for our transition academy. We know that your superintendent will get a mentor assigned to them by the IASA there and that's at no cost to the district. So, they'll have a mentor that they can call, a sup, you know, retired superintendent who works for IASA that will be there for those day-to-day things. This is an academy that would be for their first six months. They would meet with other new superintendents across the country facilitated and there they would be focusing on these kind of key deliverables. What what they should have in a 100 day plan, what kinds of things that they need, what should they be looking for, looking at different key performance indicators and what the research and the best practices are. Um looking at the evaluation process and how they work with their board and looking at strategic plan alignment. and I know that you'll be close to looking at an re-upping your strategic plan in a year. So, that would be working with

them on what would be best practices in that way. So, that is something that um would be part of having our firm uh find work on this search, your superintendent be automatically enrolled in that um transition academy. So, this is just a draft timeline. I want to emphasize draft. It's really based on what we've come to understand is where you are right now with this process. But most importantly would be at that first planning meeting. We would look at this and make sure is this where you want to be and we would give you our very honest input about where we think this will or will not work successfully and what might need to be revised.

So you can see some things on there that are TBDs for instance because we would want to make sure. Um but nonetheless, we do believe that this is a an achievable timeline um with good collaboration and you have pieces in place that we can work with. Um and with the three of us, we think we can tackle that capacity issue in this time frame. But we would also make sure along the way that you felt you were in control of the process and feeling informed and confident because at some point if enough of you are not feeling confident, we want to take a pause and make sure that we are meeting your needs as a board and that might mean changing different parts of the timeline appropriately. Um, and that's important because the last thing you want to happen is to get to the end and wish you had done something different in the middle. um that really undermines confidence. So, it's worth it because you only get this decision so many times. And then again, just to reiterate, um you know, we do think that Karen and I particularly come to you with experience with large complex districts. Um this is not um a job for faint of heart, shall we say, and we want to make sure that we bring that knowledge that we have about that to this process. Uh, we are available to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I'm not saying I want you to call me at 3 in the morning, but if for some reason that came up, I would do my best to be available. Um, and then the other thing I would like to emphasize is it's customizable. So, if you come back and say, "Gee, we talked about doing it this way. Can we do it this way?" We're going to work to make that happen. We don't get it to you, set it, and forget it. Um, so regular communication is going to be part of that. And that is our summary. We want to hopefully we hit the 15 minutes and gave you time for questions cuz it's been a long evening for you, but we want to give you what is going to be helpful for you to make a decision.

Perfect. Okay. Well, you already answered our first question on the slide right there, so we can go ahead and skip to our second, which is um what have you already learned about district 15 and how does that inform the way you would design and execute the search for us? I I would just start it goes with what we ended with the most of all is it's not just a large district in terms of students but you're serving different communities

and that can happen within smaller districts but the scale that it happens here and what that means for the district office for the board and therefore for the relationship between the superintendent and the board is key. Um so to me that really is going to frame um how we look at the data that comes in and then how we assertively recruit. Now you'll get passive recruitment and that'll be we'll filter that but our assertive recruitment will be very targeted to that understanding that I just expressed. I I would say that the other thing that that's really important is the engagement process especially for the communities maybe that you don't serve as much as that of that community like I know you serve portion of Shamberg. Correct. They're probably not the biggest district in Shamburgg.

Right. Right. I know you're not. Um but you want to make sure that those communities feel that they're a part of the process, that they're heard, that they're listened to. Um, so I think I I think we both know that from, you know, while I two major communities, we really had five communities

um, where I was. So I I'm very familiar with that uh, need. The the one other thing I'd add that we didn't emphasize too much here, but is part of all of our searches is as we sit down to find out, you know, when we're going to be doing engagement and where, we do want to make sure that we always have access to somebody who's going to make that engagement accessible for people from different parts of your community. Linguistically particularly, we have to make sure that we have somebody there to help with that. Um, and that we have to promote that engagement in their home language often to get them there. I don't I haven't checked to see if you have liaison. Some districts do, but we would probably leverage liaison a lot to make sure that we got full engagement.

And my assistance for multilingual is already she's on the ready. Okay. She knows it's covered. That does not surprise me. No, not at all. Um so the next question um is what specific strategies do you use to bring forward the high performing candidates? um ideally the seated superintendents and I think you mentioned a little bit about maybe not ideally seated superintendents in your presentation but um who may not be actively seeking a new position.

Well, part of that is our network and knowing who those high achieving superintendents are. Uh and just I mean we'll call them. We call them. We see them. We'll be at be at a conference this weekend and we'll say, "Hey, do you know about this job?" Um, we connect with our other associates like I said,

saying, "Okay, we're, you know, working on, you know, district 15's position. Who do you know? This is the, you know, it's a complex district. It's a large district. Who has the skills to do that?" Um, and who should we be tapping? So we really do, you know, try to do that active recruitment and we'll also call people that we know are not interested but may know people who are interested because that's the other thing that happens. So, you know, I start a spreadsheet and we start going down and just we'll put anybody down that we can think of and we'll call them and see if they know someone because sometimes they do and that's happened where we've

Yeah, it's a spiderweb a bit and I'd say for instance in this case, so if there wasn't somebody sitting who's head of a large district right now, but somebody who we know in a large district, they're going to know other people in large districts often. It just tends to happen that way. And those are good people to reach out to if they're not the right person. They're going to have a sense of who might be in another district that we might not know in first degree. But the degrees there are very few degrees. Uh so uh I think the big trick is um doing those taking the time to do those direct calls even from people who we know aren't the person for the job. um because they we rely on that expertise that they have and we have to recognize when we don't have particular expertise but who does?

Okay. Um can you tell us about um when uh you found a candidate but um that search didn't go as planned? Can you tell us what did you learn from that search or what did you um and how have you changed your approach to um working with other school districts? Well, I I I think every search I've ever done is different because every board is different in what they want. Um, so sometimes searches don't go as planned because sometimes I' I've had scenario where board members changed their mind about what they wanted in the process and so that you to do a pivot um to try to meet that need. So it wasn't exactly how we started out but they decided they wanted something different. Um so you you learn from every single search that you do. Um, and I also know that it's never done until it's totally done because there can also be I've had you know contract issues happen where um, you know, the contract is they found the candidate they loved but they could not come to an agreement on a contract and then you're back at okay is the second in line, you know, someone that you can all get behind. Um, so you you just have to be ready for anything and everything that could possibly happen or go wrong and just be prepared to it's not unlike being a superintendent, right, Lori? You have to be prepared for anything and everything. [laughter]

So, uh, I'll just give two quick examples. I've been part of not leading searches. Um, one is, and this is part of our search with you. If we go through and bring you a slate and you interview all of them and you come away unsatisfied for whatever reason, you know, we don't we don't say, "Okay, well, we're done. We'll start all over and give you a new contract." We don't the contract's not done until we've brought you a successful slate, right? So, we go and do that again. And that I've seen that happen. The other thing is our real goal is to bring you a slate of candidates, any of which we think could be successful. And so I think part of it is just preparing thinking that way. It's hard though when you go through the process in the scenario you're talking about to say that next one is but what I wanted to bring up was um to Karen's point is actually to plan for it. So when I worked uh in Skoi it was right in the middle of a board election transition.

Yes. And we help the board problem solve on how to include the incoming board members appropriately and how to not include the outgoing board members but include them appropriately. And we helped work through that process because it was a potential going to be a potential problem if we didn't get ahead of it. And so we do want to make sure when we meet with you, especially when we do these individual interviews, if we hear something that we think could be an obstacle in the road, we'll problem solve ahead of time to make sure we have some flexibility to get around it. The truth is though, we're not done until we get you your successful candidate. So,

all right, we are at time. I was just working MY WAY. I KNOW YOU WERE LOOKING AT ME, but I was looking at the CLOCK AND I I looked down to see if she was Does that mean some of you feel like you've been denied or you were you [laughter] were granted earlier that she had everything at a time? There we go. [laughter] Yes. Making our way down. Thank you very much and good luck with your decision. Thank you. Have a great evening. It's an important decision. Yep. I just want you to know I don't normally wear tennis shoes with formal occasions. I didn't [laughter] point it

Hello. Welcome. Of course. Anytime. Anytime. [laughter] How are you, sir? Nice meeting you. Nice to meet you. [laughter] All right. Welcome. Welcome. Have a seat for you [laughter] about 5:30 and so we will try and um keep this uh keep it tight for you. I know that we have 15 minutes. So I want to honor that time. 15 minutes for questions.

Correct. Correct. And before we begin, happy belated um super or I'm sorry, uh board member appreciation day. I know we're a few days [laughter] late on that, but we're celebrating the whole month here. You got to celebrate something. [laughter] Drag them all around. We're ready to just jump right in. They know. Yeah, just as long as green light is on and then you don't have to speak directly into it, but you got to be close enough that it can pick you up. Okay. Is this close enough? I think so. Can we hear? Okay, we they gave us the thumbs up. Okay, great. Great.

Great. Well, thanks for having us tonight. Um, we're here representing School Exec Connect. Um, I'm Dave Pelzette. Um, we're going to get into introductions uh in just a second. I'm going to turn it turn it over to my colleague Angelica to start us off. Good evening everyone. Um, Superintendent Dr. Hines and President um leaders uh and the rest of the board of education help. There you go. All good.

Okay. It look green before. Okay. Well, thank you for that. Uh well, good evening. Thank you so much for um the invitation for uh being here tonight to present as to why uh we can be your uh partner in leading the superintendent search. Um it has been really exciting to learn a lot more about district 15 and everything that you guys offer. uh you have a pretty strong mission statement and also your um your values which speak to collaboration um student engagement, community engagement, uh belonging and um obviously safety uh for for your students. Um this uh this is something that I I really took to heart. Um you really spoke about the commitment to your diverse um community and diverse learners and as someone that is diverse that really spoke to my heart. So, I was really excited to learn so much about district um district 15. Uh aim high and achieve higher was something fascinating to see throughout the throughout the website. Um even though I do not uh reside in the community, I do live about 10 minutes away. And what I know is that success is contagious. So what I what I know is that by having such a high-profile district such as yours, uh being part of the community, that really helps other districts uh become aware of who you are and also trying to follow suit in everything that you that you guys do. Um I was able to watch uh the board meetings and something that I noticed is you always begin with um a student recognition and with staff recognition and that was just impressive. Um, you also talk every single time about all the work that you do in moving the district forward. So, you had all of your administrators talk about everything that they do on a daily basis uh within their departments. Um, I'm going to give a shout out to your assistant superintendent of human resources who did an amazing work with everything that she's doing with recruitment. Um, I do human resources and I find that very appealing um every

time that I listen about a human resources work. Uh so it it was something um incredible to see a lot of transparency um in your district. You have had some challenges in the last in the past few uh months, but you have been um speaking about that during your um throughout your board meetings. Um and also just talking about everything that you have going on with the um multi-year planned uh capital project plan that you have um underway and again everything that that that you do. So it has been fascinating to to learn so much about district 15. All right, we want to jump into some uh keep you in suspense here. So, a little bit of introduction um and who we are and what we bring to the table as we find the next leader um for your district. So, I'm Dr. Dave Pelzette. I am a current sitting superintendent in a high performing school district in the western suburbs, western Cook County. Um I've been a superintendent in my current district for over a decade. Um, prior to that I was uh an assistant superintendent in Wultt School District 39. Um, I was a principal in Wilmet School District 39 of a couple of different schools. Um, I prior to that was principal in Lake Forest School District and an assistant principal. Um, I've only been an assistant principal for one year and I was only an assistant superintendent for a couple years. My tagline um is I don't really like being an assistant anything. So I want to kind of move through [clears throat] that uh somewhat quickly. Um prior to uh my uh administrative career was I was a dean of students which was a teaching still on a teacher contract and then also a middle school teacher. So um recovering middle school teacher. So yeah it it's it's been a good a good path. So I'll turn it over to my colleague. Uh yes, my name again is Anelica Romano and um I have been in the public schools for about for over 20 years, closer to um 30

years actually. I was doing the math last night. Um and I have been um leading human resources departments for the past uh 15 years. I am currently the executive director of human resources um in Glenbrook and Northbrook uh for Glenrober High School District 225. I have also served um in human resources for the community of Cicero, Niles, Elmherst, and West Chicago. So those are uh really um these are communities that that again I close very um I keep very close to my heart. I have enjoyed my um I have enjoyed my work there. Um as part of my hobbies that I would say I am also pretty involved in different organizations. One of the organizations is the Illinois Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendent. Um, I am a past board member, but I continue to be pretty engaged and pretty um involved and active in everything that they do. I am also currently serving as a board member for the Illinois Association of um school personnel administrators, which is the human resources organization within the state of Illinois.

All right, let's talk a little bit about some of our uh statistics. And again, Angelica,

yes. Um, so really exciting. So our um success rate is about 97 uh% and what that means is it's not only about placing uh superintendents and administrators but also about them receiving a second contract after they have completed their um their their their contract for two three years um whatever they the first year um the first contract um it is. We have uh done over 600 searches uh since 2004. um a hundred of the searches have been completed within the time frame and within the uh budget that has been um outlined uh from the beginning and uh you'll see two of us here but we also work with 60 more consultants that would be um able to support uh with this process if we are chosen.

All right, I want to advance my computer but that isn't going to do anything. So I want to talk a little bit about our timeline. Um, again, we want to try and um move through a um a relatively assertive timeline, but also give the process the time it needs in order to find the best quality candidate. So, what we've done in the next few slides is talk a little bit about um kind of go from very broad to more specific. So again, looking at I know some phases numbered uh uh different portions of of a process, but looking at those those first 30 days to really establish the relationships, figure out that process, figure out the you know finalize the timeline. Um we want to create a candidate profile and again um looking at finding someone who is the good a good fit for your school district. Um, one of the sayings that I like to to throw out when it comes to superintendent searches, it's not a prize to be won, but a match to be made, right? And so, you want to find that match that is going to be a good fit, not only for the short term, but for the long term. You want someone who's going to be around for a while. Um, that phase C, looking to collaborate with stakeholders and develop a candidate pool for you. bring that pool forward, have the board involved in this process. Um, and then that screening and inter uh interviewing uh and selecting of that final candidate. Um, as we move through again, while we've we've this is the typical process that we'll share with you, the process is malleable, right? It's able to be adjusted based on what works for the board, what works for your community. So again, we want to personalize that process and make sure that we hear the voices of your families, of your teachers, of your administrators, of those that are having that lived experience within your

district. Um, we're going to work to attract talent. And um, one of the things I think that sets us apart as consultants and as a firm is that we are in the field. We are sitting at the tables with superintendents. access has privileges and we have access to those candidates, right? We don't have to um schedule a special lunch. We're at the table eating lunch with the people during the work doing the work with them. Um so again that that attracting talent using our our network of not only the two of us but the 60 plus um consultants behind us looking to pro to provide membership mentorship to whomever comes in provide mentorship to the board as they prepare for this process and then obviously wanting to bring the best candidate forward. kind of just again bringing that process kind of full circle um kind of breaking it down even further. Start with a planning meeting and so the the key at the top are we'll do this in consultation with the board. It's either board joint with the consultant or a consultant kind of job. So, working with the board to plan um figure out the right level of advertising, figure out the uh start to work on that profile, getting to know your board members and your the personality of your district. um a community engagement piece where we're again bringing constituents together, focus groups, surveys, uh which I know there's already a survey out, so you're already starting to collect some of that information, being able to kind of disagregate that and and boil that down to a set of uh qualities. Um board approval, we'd want you to approve that superintendent profile, right? We want the community to know this is what we value, this is what we believe, this is what we think the next leader needs to bring forward. and making that kind of fullthroated support of this is the profile and what we're looking for and

then just hitting the pavement and really working on that search piece. So networking, recruiting, um doing those kind of interviews, uh screening interview pieces. I mean, there's only so much you can learn from a paper screening. We want to really start to uh get to know the candidates that are interested in the position. Oh, fixed it. support. [laughter]

Um, we would uh have a board workshop where we can work on uh interview techniques and discuss what what types of interview questions you would like to um to ask your candidates. Then we would have those first round interviews. We look to bring about six candidates, a slate of six candidates to the board that we feel are high quality. Um any final preparations that that we would need? Again, um there are closed searches and open searches. you, we would work with you to put together a search that works best. My recommendation would be a closed search. Um uh we want to um make sure that we're able to bring candidates forward and that they feel safe to come forward, right? In in that uh respect. Um again, board would have then second interviews with a narrowed down group. So that that six generally would go to two or three. Um, and you would either in an a formal or maybe an informal where it was a board dinner or something like that. Um, have that kind of one of those final um board uh interactions with with a a narrowed down slate. Make your final decision, name the superintendent. We all pat ourselves on the back and look forward to the continuing the great work that is happening in the district. Um the way we have typically worked with the board and again it this is a a a process that can be adjusted is that we would have um a direct a district contact generally in our experience that's been the um either the board recording secretary or the superintendent secretary. But then the board would identify a board contact whether that's the board president or someone else who draws the short straw or whatever to to be the the contact person that would then be working with us but then also reporting back to the board the work that that is taking place. Um again just wanting to to talk a

little bit about how we can oh see I'm advancing it in the wrong place. um wanting to talk a little bit about the uh guarantee that we have for our success, your success, our success, and the satisfaction of the board. Um is that that first if that first slate of candidates isn't successful, you know, we bring six forward and you're like, "No thanks. We'll bring we we will identify additional candidates. We'll continue to bring candidates forward until a finalist is is selected." um if the superintendent resigns or is dismissed within those first two years. So again, that two-year guarantee that um we will run the search for no additional cost. Um and then um we will recruit your superintendent for the duration of his his or her first two contracts. Little bit about the fees. Um again, um similar to I'm sure what you've seen uh in the past, we're we're we're very competitive when it comes to to fees. Now, um one of the things that I would highly recommend that the board considers is that background check for $800. I mean, it's pretty extensive. Um and again, we are confident that we're going to bring great candidates forward, but that peace of mind is always an important. it's it's worth the price of admission so to speak. Um you know one of the things and we talked a little bit about what sets us apart from um from some of our colleagues and some of the other firms and again I think the fact that we are in the field that we are having these conversations with um current um practitioners um really sets us apart. We don't have to schedule meetings with potential candidates because we're in the room doing the work with potential candidates. So, speaking personally, I

am the president of the IASA West Cook division. Um, I am um a member of the um Suburban School Superintendent, which is a national group. Um, president of the West Suburban Consortium of Academic Excellence. Like really, my MO is if if you can raise your hand for something, I raise my hand. So, lots of boards that I'm on, lots of leadership roles outside of um kind of my paid leadership role. Um and Angelica similarly has um has a impressive resume of leadership experiences outside of her her regular job. So, again, won't won't spend waste your time reading through all of these. They're up there on the screen. But knowing that we're at the table doing the work with other superintendents, other administrators, I think is something that sets us apart from um from the competition. Again, just a few references. Um Thank you. a few references um that of some other local districts that we've worked with. Again, there isn't a slide large enough to fit and a font small enough to fit all of the um searches that that we've done. Um but again just wanted to highlight a few that um that are um of note and we I think we are at or under our 15 minutes right under for sure. Okay. So um I couple of questions that we have for you but I you definitely have answered the first one already which is something that you differentiates you from the other firms so we can skip over that one. Um, and I feel like unless anyone else disagrees, I feel like um, what you know about D15, I think they covered at the beginning as well. You explained a lot about our district, which is great. Um, so moving on to the next one would be, what specific strategies do you use to bring forward high-erforming candidates,

ideally seated superintendent who may not be actively seeking a new position? Yeah, I think the the the the advantage we have is that we know the people in the field because we're doing the work with them. So, we know the large um district superintendents, we know the deputy superintendents that are working in districts with, you know, 20, 30, 40,000 kids in it. And um we're able to have those kind of let me pull you aside and have a conversation and talk about this great opportunity. Um I think again there's there are a lot of positives that are that that are a part of this particular role. Um one of those is a high functioning board and moving into a position where you've had a high performing superintendent. So I think there there's going to be some quite a bit of interest in this position. But again, our ability to pull colleagues aside and say, "Hey, there's an opportunity here that I think you should really consider is something that um that is an advantage for us."

Um so piggybacking on that um question, so when you look at um these uh candidates, how um do you evaluate whether or not um they can lead um a district such as ours? um we're we're large, we're complex, um the students um run the gamut. Um they're highly diverse. So, how can you look at each individual CA candidate and determine whether they meet the criteria for working here?

That's a great question. I think the pre-work that we do with the community to identify some of those qualities that the um community wants to see in their next superintendent are going to help lead that process, are going to help lead that um that piece, right? knowing um you know looking at at people's previous experiences of large districts of complex systems of having um served in a variety of roles. While um your current superintendent's name plate says superintendent, there are many hats that she's wearing that aren't necessarily um uh on her name plate or on the outside of her door, so to speak. And so being able to really get to know the district, get to know what you're looking for, and then finding that match kind of that match to be made, that a prize to be won piece to to bring the right person forward. Um, you know, as as we did review uh spend some time looking at board meetings and and going through your website, one of the things that we noticed is that um administrators present uh the kind of work that they've been doing over the course of the last month at each board meeting, right? Awesome transparency. You want someone with high levels of anti integrity that is going to maintain that type of transparency with your community, right? And so, um, knowing those types of things and being able to match those qualities to the right candidate is is the the tact we would take.

Oh, I'm up. Um, from your perspective, what does valuable community engagement look like in your search process, particularly in a large, diverse community such as ours? And how do you drive participation?

Yeah. That's a tough It's tough. I mean in in the days in in these days that we have entered into Zoom meetings and um you know I you know kind of video conferencing and and getting everything from you know a 4-in screen it's hard to get people to show up right and so really casting a wide net offering several different opportunities for people to um provide feedback um as a as a practitioner using all of those different methods, right? So, if face toface works well for you, great. Let's have those face tof face focus groups. If we need to run those via Zoom or over video conferencing, let's let's look at that as an option, too. That may work better for families that have young kids that need child care or or are working and and are going to try and do something during their lunch break. You've got to um bring the opportunities to the people to to the community in the way that the community wants it. It can't be the way I want to do it. It's got to be the way the community needs it. Right. I think the fact that we have not, you know, a a diverse group of um consultants who can um meet people where they are and as far as uh speaking in their native languages. I think that's going to be helpful for us as well to get that kind of diverse feedback from your community.

Yes. And I was going to add to that um if I may that this what who you have in front of you is who would be working with you. Uh we do have uh partners that would be able to support um to support us as well but we are the ones that would be in the buildings. we are the ones that would be having those conversations with the community and something especially in my role as human resources as I deal with so many uh compliance questions and um perhaps not the most easy uh easiest conversations with terminations and things to that extent something that I do pride myself with is being able to be relational and to u be able to establish relationships and something that I I think that I'm really good at is building those relationships with our union leaderships but also with the community that we serve. Uh you're we know that your district is highly diverse. Um and seeing people that look like them is also a good way for them to feel comfortable uh making sure that they are engaged in the conversations and that they are able to provide that feedback and support.

Okay. So I guess this is the final question. And um tell us about a time where your firm completed a search and didn't go as planned and what did you learn from that incident and uh how how how has that shaped your approach um going forward?

So um I had done a search um and I'll be a bit vague with some of the details just because we don't want to um share too much information regarding specific um schools or organizations. It was a a small school in the western suburbs. It was a therapeutic day school um and it had a religious school as well. And so the constituents that we were working with, we were working with um their parents, we were working with um their teachers, and we were working with their school board. And all three of those groups wanted something very very very different. And it was really it became very very difficult to um pinpoint the the qualities of a candidate that that would really work. So to the point where some of the groups were at odds, right? The the board was kind of and again when we were talking about kind of a smaller organization, everybody knows everybody's personality, everybody knows um everybody's preferences and things like that. And so you had kind of the the board at odds with some of the teachers, you had some of the teachers, at odds with with some of the parents. And so what we did is we had each group create uh or nominate some a representative to um come together because we needed to hit consensus on what we were looking for, right? And again, when it's hard enough to find great leaders, but when you f have to find a great leader that not only has a a deep knowledge of special education and students with profound needs, um has worked with those types of students and falls into a certain religious category um becomes really, really, really difficult. Right? So, we brought this group together. We led them through a workshop regarding what you know again the qualities of the leader that they're looking for. where we did kind of a fist of five. Um, knowing full well we're not going to get all fives on everything, but we also don't want fists on everything. We're looking for threes

and fours. And we were able to get them to a point where, okay, what are your non-negotiables, but what are those negotiables? And let's talk about those and got them to a point where we were able to identify the qualities that they were looking for in candidates and and then able to bring a slate forward. Um, I think the the piece that that we learned through that process was that there there isn't a one-sizefits-all approach, right? You can have your typical process, but that doesn't mean that typical process is always going to work, and you may end up having to adjust and um go in a different direction when it comes to to creating consensus around what they're looking what a particular organization is looking for in its next leader.

Thank you. Mhm. Sorry, can I ask um about that particular um scenario? So um what was the success rate? What what became of the super?

So we we did end up finding um a successful candidate. It was really tough because some of the the um board members had been on their board for a really long time and they um they really wanted a male candidate. And um again, I think we need to be open to all different types of candidates. With that said, they it was really important because it was kind of religious based to have that faith piece. And so I said, you've got one really limiting factor to to um to not to essentially not look at 50% of the candidates because of their gender doesn't make sense. And we really can't do that. That's not legal. So we're not going to be able to do that. And so,

right, most of all. And so, we were able to to bridge that gap and we were able to find the successful candidate, a female, to come and lead that that school and and they're still there. All right, that was our last question. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. We appreciate you staying late as well.

Perfectly on time. Yeah. D almost to the buzzer. Open session and convene in close session. Please move the open session and convene and close session. Discuss the appointment employment constant compensation specific employees specific individuals to service independent contractors in an educational setting according to five over 2 C and C1. All right. Second

second. All right. Um all in favor I I All right.

Okay, just give me the thumbs up. Okay. All right. Um, well, thank you fellow board members for a long marathon uh evening and of course Dr. Hines and Clara for helping to coordinate and our team in the back on videos. Um, we had [laughter] um we just had a really great conversation. Um, it was fortunate to be able to have a great conversation because we had so many um, incredible firms that shared the work that they do. um really great and thorough presentations and answers to our questions. And so we're very very grateful that everyone submitted their proposal and took the time to prepare um and attend in person today. All right. Um let's go over to our last motion 5.3.

Yep. Which is on the very last page. Um, so if we could move to approve the firm that we selected. I move to approve the selection of BWP um as a search firm to assist District 15 in finding the next superintendent. Second. All right. Discussion. Okay. Uh, can we do a roll call, please? Yes. Anarino. I. Taylor. I. Shoutai. I. Khan. Hi. Backman. I Hunt I hater I

All right. Thank you and congratulations to BWP. Uh may I have a motion to adjurnn? I move to adjourn. Second. All right. All in favor? I I Thanks everybody. Thank you.